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Virtual Barn-Raising Underway–How to feel as if you’re part of something big

The next generation web, whatever catchphrase will finally be attached to it, is hardly a magical divination. There is currently very tedious work going on, especially in deeper recesses where labels like “semantic” and “natural language” are pitched out onto the field.

Private beta versions of well known natural language projects:

Powerset

Textdigger

True Knowledge

have employed legions of invitation-only volunteers chomping at the bit to count themselves as contributors to search history. And they are eyeball deep in seriously, tedious work–do the demo search queries deliver? are there ample utilities to allow users to pursue a thread? bug after bug after bug is unearthed .

Language is so much more expansive, so attached to meanings that the undertakings seem ultimately like nothing more than pipe dreams intended to keep the curious busily chipping away at search query tasks and random discussions, ad nauseum.

Is it possible to corral linguistics, to ultimately fill the search engine brain space with the whole cornucopia of semantic meaning, so nothing, not even the smallest nuance, is left out?

If everyone pitched in…imagine… perhaps the task could be dispatched with more promptly, eh? Take Wikipedia–currently the single largest source for most of the online, cataloged reference material. And still no end in sight to the wealth of topics yet to be explored or expanded upon.

You can help: why not pitch in to the Wikipedia project? The next best thing to a 60s “happening” we have right now. Did you realize that anyone can add information to Wikipedia? What do you know that the rest of us don’t? Maybe you won’t be accurate with some bit of data? Don’t worry–editors come behind and clean up, other contributors fill in the blanks, so to speak. But I’ll bet everyone has something he or she could contribute. I guarantee you’ll feel as if you’re part of some vast experiment, a cosmic odd job that has much deeper meaning than you realize.

Welcome to the virtual barn-raising, folks. Pick up a hammer and a nail…

If you like building things, if you love the smell of a hardware store, and you have a quirky passion for the Internet, you’re gonna dig the next big thing…

The Ning Blog gives an excellent and downright sexy explanation of platforms. These application components are right now being made available en masse to users like you and me–non-developers, with maybe enough know-how to be dangerous. Yahoo Pipes is a good example of the future of platform mash-ups, but this is only the tip of the iceberg the barest hint at the types and directions of growth rushing head-on:

semantic

commercial

communal

–a true cyber web of bartered cyber nuts and bolts that is hands down HOT! If the Food Network can have its food porn and real estate can have its sex appeal, then platform mash-ups are it for application and internet development.